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these concerns and anxieties around the fragile Icelandic kinship sys-
tem do not need to be pinned down to one particular decade or even cen-
tury, or to one specific historical event, although the events of the Sturlung
age might have intensified Icelandic society’s preoccupation with the inse-
curities surrounding kinship ties and tensions. thus, the breakdown of ties
among the Sturlungar themselves, as depicted in Íslendinga saga, becomes
symptomatic of the extent to which feuds and power struggles operate
during the thirteenth century, and thus of the disintegration of other so-
cial structures.117 Generally, however, this is a culturally pervasive concern
since it appears both in sagas that have been dated to the “classical” period
of composition, like Gísla saga, as well as in “post-classical” texts like the
extant versions of Grettis saga and Harðar saga. Moreover, the continued
transmission of these narratives across the centuries betrays their ongoing
relevance for their audiences, which shows that the anxieties surrounding
the disintegration of family structures appear to be an issue that retained
its currency throughout Icelandic history. Rather than tying the concern
with family relationships that the outlaw sagas bear witness to through
their monstrously significant protagonists to one specific historical mo-
ment, it is therefore more productive to read them as mirrors into general
societal concerns that became projected onto the figure of the outlaw.
the monster, according to Cohen, delimits “the social spaces through
which bodies may move. to step outside this official geography is to risk
attack by some monstrous border patrol or (worse) to become monstrous
oneself”.118 read this way, the monstrous outlaws of the Íslendingasögur
delimit not only the physical geography of Iceland, moving in the “mon-
strous territory” of highlands and islands, in the spaces where trolls live.
they also point to what constituted the limits of social, human behaviour:
lack of control and moderation, stealing and killing close kin do not belong
to what is socially acceptable in these narratives. Moreover, the outlaw
sagas with their exploration of families turned inward, and turning on
each other, because of the presence of the monstrous outlaw – whom they
have helped to create – allow an exploration of the breakdown of family
structures. the heightened tensions of these narratives and the presence of
117 Guðrún Nordal, Ethics and Action in Thirteenth-Century Iceland (odense: university Press
of Southern Denmark, 1998), 29.
118 Cohen, “Monster Culture,” 12.
“HE HaS LonG forfEItED aLL KInSHIP tIES”